The Tripping Point (Shaking the Tree)

Who’s that I see walkin’ in these woods?

There’s a reason fairy tales have been plumbed for art’s sake so deeply: they’re bottomless.

Murky with our fears,
desires and other shadowy drives, the stories of the Brothers Grimm,
Hans Christian Andersen and the like consist of just the sort of muck in
which artists love to play. The Tripping Point, directed by
Samantha Van Der Merwe, lets eight playwrights run wild in the stuff—yet
the production that emerges is almost immaculate.

In this “exhibition
of fairy tale installations,” audience members move from partitioned
space to partitioned space to watch eight approximately 10-minute-long
monologues, each based on a different story and penned by a different
playwright and performed simultaneously. It’s fun—fast-paced without
being frivolous. The performance spaces, meticulously designed by Sheri
Earnhart, are tiny; this, along with the fact that the audience is
divided among eight performances, makes the monologues intimate affairs,
experienced only feet from the actor and shared with just a handful of
fellow attendees.

The Tripping Point’s
writers use their fairy tales less as outlines than as prompts,
thematic starting points from which they proceed in very different
directions. Nick Zagone’s “Kingdowm” (based on the lesser-known Grimm
tale “Iron Hans”) grapples with masculinity; “To Cape,” Matthew B.
Krebski’s take on “Little Red Riding Hood,” tackles sex and power (and
features a vigorous performance from Gavin Hoffman); and Andrea
Stolowitz’s “The Red Shoes” treats the age-old individual-vs.-society
conflict. There’s even a wordless “monologue,” Patrick Wohlmut’s
“Bluebeard”; it’s a sober meditation on passionate violence played with
quiet power by Beth Summers.

Sometimes not quite
lucid and always fleeting, these dreamlike pieces speak to something
that’s beyond intellect and deeply personal. Not every one hits home for
every viewer, but this much is clear: Everybody behind The Tripping Point has approached their source material with earnestness, imagination and ability.